New Vodafone TV install

Hi - I had fibre installed at my place on Tuesday morning, and the Chorus tech installed the Vodafone TV set top box but I am getting error S0005 - the installation is not complete. I rang on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings to get some help and after waiting over an hour on the phone for someone to talk to me, I hung up. I have rung, emailed, sent messages and now posting a message here and NO ONE WILL HELP ME. This is extremely frustrating as Vodafone were quick enough to sign me up but have not delivered the service that was promised. I now have a Vodafone TV that does not work. At all. My account number is 452503517 and I would really like to hear from someone today. My phone number is 021 063 9840.

Re: New Vodafone TV install

You may want to check out the dozens and dozens of online complaints about the new VodafoneTV box, it has so many issues that you would not believe it has been released for people to use and that they charge for it! Check out vodafone facebook page, the several tech websites in NZ and even this online community - you will see I am not joking!! You may wish to reconsider being locked into this paperweight product!

We have dozens and dozens of issues and even the most basic questions you will struggle to get an answer to - my last one, three days ago should be simple, why are we getting recording error issues constantly.....still waiting to hear back. And yeah, Hamish conveniently answers questions very rarely, and usually just fobs you off - like oh this upgrade is urgently being worked on....yadayadayada - same answer over a year is not really good enough.

Re: New Vodafone TV install

Hi @PerryBraiden, I'm sorry, I've only just logged into the Communtiy tonight for the first time in a while. I'll have a look at your earlier question. I'm responsible for the product, but customer service isn't the primary focus of my role, so I only get to log in occasionally to answer customer questions directly.

Totally agree Perry, it's a hunk of junk and I have to agree I have seen hundreds if not thousands of complaints about it. It doe not work well at all and I suspect mistatea must work for vodafone - it has had two major outages just in the last week alone as evidenced by vodafone having given a miserly $10 credit to everyone.

Now if we could just get a credit for all the other issues we have. Gotta love a product you cannot record half the shows or channels on that Sky does, but you are NOT told this.

I also love how if you have two devices that you now get HALF the storage space that you used to have. Also convenient to not be told that too.

Or that it craps out constantly. Or that the remote lags. Or that you have to spend ages navigating anywhere instead of one or two pushes of the remote.

It is so crap it isn't funny. It is a pity they con you with this product, tell you all this stuff it supposedly does, and it does not, then they lock you in a contract. It is the bad words cannot express.....if I owned VF I would fire anyone who has worked on this product and put it out for the poor public to use.

And yes, looking around I see Hamish and Vodafone rarely answer peoples questions so it is pure tosh to suggest otherwise.

Re: New Vodafone TV install

Sorry for the delayed response, I only occasionally log in to the Community to try to answer questions/help out. I'm the Product Owner for Vodafone TV and very proud of the product. In my role I can only spend my spare time helping our front line staff with customers directly.

The issues you mention aren't normal for most people. We have many many customers who are very happy with the service and so we would like to try to fix these for you. If you are able to discuss this with us directly we can try to help you out, please DM me by clicking my name.

In terms of recording, the actual figure is 88% of all programmes can be recoreded and even more can also be watched using the 3 day catch up feature. It's almost 100% of Sky's programmes that can be recorded. This product does not have a hard disk and so does not benefit from the special copyright law exemption that personal VCRs or PVRs have for recording. We continue to work with the content suppliers of the 12% that don't allow cloug recording of their content.

In terms of the recording capacity, VTV offer 500 hours of full HD recording, which is more than double the largest Freeview or Sky PVR capacities. I don't understand your comment about how having 2 set top boxes halves the capacity? They share the recording capacity so that if you record on one box you can watch the recording on the other in the other room - most customers find this is a good thing. You can also watch the recording on your mobile for key content like Sky Sports programmes.

The product should not be failing constantly for anyone, this is unusual. Please DM me your details so I can help resolve.

So do I take it that you are telling me your website is mis-advising customers? Or are you incorrect. Both cannot be true.

Getting half the recording time split between two boxes is not a great thing. If you had the same total limit between the two boxes like the STB's then yeah, it would be a good thing.

The issues we raise (and have not raised nearly all of them) are ones we clearly see mentioned lots of times on this forum and other tech forums, unfortunately NONE of these issues and limitations were mentioned to us by your staff selling this product.

Re: New Vodafone TV install

The page on the website you reference is talking about the standard package: "1 Vodafone TV Box" where 200 hours applies for customers who only have one box. For customers like you with 2 boxes you get 500 hours. So you actually get more than double the recording capacity: not half, when you have two boxes. The additional benefit is the recordings are shared between the boxes so that recordings made on one box can be watched on the other box. The ability to share recordings over multiple devices is an awesome feature, so I'm confused why you think this is a negative?

If you believe you're not getting the 500 hours of storage then please DM me your account details and we can look into it.

Note that in comparison to a Hard Disk recorder the number of hours that can be stored depends on the quality of the signal : so you will usually find a Hard Disk PVR supplier quoting hours of recording based on SD quality recordings. With Vodafone TV the number of hours recording is based on the actual hours of recording, no matter whether it's in HD or SD.

If you store 500 hours of HD quality content (an 8Mbps stream on VTV) then this is equivalent to a 1.8 TB hard disk shared between the two boxes, something you pay nothing for on VTV but costs $385 for the 1TB Freeview recorder, and $20/mth for the 1TB MySky.

I struggle to accept that. Simply put, I have been told by several vodafone employees that you get one allocation of space with this new setup not the two you used to get, and that the recording space is now "per household" and that it does not vary whether you have one device or two devices.

It is really frustrating when you ask the right questions and get told the wrong answers, it is not possible to make a factual informed decision when you get told stories that are not remotely true.

And there really is no point comparing it to sky because on sky you can record ALL the channels you want and all the programs you want, it is also a product that does not have extended periods where the service fails for users and you don't get constant error codes when attempting to record shows and long bouts of "no internet connection detected" type messages on it.

All I know is I was promised a product that was the same as and better than the good ole T-Box's and it isn't. Heck, you can't even fast forward with visual, and THAT is pretty basic stuff.